


I painted you a masterpiece (and you said I was the beautiful one)

by Take_Me_To_My_Fragile_Dreams



Series: Collaborations, Prompts and Requests [46]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Eren's just very in love, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Bullying, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 23:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9095272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Take_Me_To_My_Fragile_Dreams/pseuds/Take_Me_To_My_Fragile_Dreams
Summary: Hello Eren, it’s nice to meet you.
  


  And Eren is--Eren should not be so disappointed and elated at the same time, should not want to bounce around his room because his soulmate 
  
    knows his name,
  
   wrote it out in pretty curling letters that Eren wants to keep forever when he can’t even return the favor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was a [prompt ](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/63/4f/87/634f87f8098ac15a77c6db0292d63eec.jpg)about soulmates that see whatever their partner draws/writes on their skin and mystery dicks. As you can see it spun out of control.

The first time Armin had painted beauty on his skin Eren had been nine. Sure, there had been the occasional smear of marker on small hands, or a smudge of ink on his face, but nothing intentional. Nothing more than the clumsiness of a child.

This was different.

Blue lines of ink ran up around his wrist, twisting and curving around one another in a nonsensical shape. Eren had wondered if his soulmate was just very bad at drawing before Armin, as if reading his thoughts, had quite promptly thrown that notion out the door.

A dragon came next, sweeping up Eren’s arm in wobbly lines that were still far better than anything that Eren could do, let alone anyone in his class. It shot flames into the crease of his arm, and Eren could almost swear that he could feel the tickling sensation of a pen against his skin. A ocean sat below the dragon, and Eren regretted the fact that he was still so small when the pen stopped, no more skin left to color.

Eren waited, watching to see if his soulmate would continue onto the other arm only to be disappointed. 

The drawing did not stop there. Though there seemed to be no real pattern to when the doodles would appear on his arm, Eren kept an eye out for them. He felt silly trying to match his soulmate’s skill, hesitating with pen barely pressed to skin every time he went to send some sort of message back. His soulmate was creating new worlds on his skin, how could Eren simply send a wobbly ‘hello’?

So Eren waited, watching as his soulmate grew in skill, proud of the person on the other side of the drawings. His admiration grew with each line and yet, so did the pressure to send something just as wonderful back.

Until suddenly nothing seemed more important than replying even if it was a wobbly ‘hello’.

* * *

 

There were things no one told Eren about when it came to being someone’s soulmate. 

No one mentioned the days when cheerful meadows of flowers turned to dreary rainy days. No one told him about the heart stopping moments when words of hate would appear on his skin, and that the streaks of marker and wobbly letters meant they had been written unwillingly. No one said anything about watching red lines appear on his thighs, over and over again, criss crossing and bleeding into one another before being painted over with messy scrawls of black soaked in desperation and the quivering strength of  _ I do not want to die _ . 

No one told Eren that he would have to live with these things knowing that he could not protect his soulmate from them. Not yet.

All he could do was write.

* * *

 

Eren is shaking as he presses a pen to his wrist, both of nerves and of the fact that his soulmate is on a very narrow ledge if the lines still being drawn on his thighs has anything to say about it. He doesn’t know what to say to a stranger that he has only seen glimpses of through affection painted onto his skin. So instead of some special declaration, instead of a messy drawing of his own, he writes a simple ‘hi’ in bold black letters. 

The writing on his thighs stops.

Eren waits, heart in his throat. It takes an agonizing minute and a half--Eren had watched the clock--before he gets a response.

_ Hello _ . 

Eren bites his lip around a small smile. ‘My name is Eren,’ he says because they still have not been properly introduced.

_ Hello Eren, it’s nice to meet you. _

And Eren is--Eren should not be so disappointed and elated at the same time, should not want to bounce around his room because his soulmate  _ knows his name, _ wrote it out in pretty curling letters that Eren wants to keep forever when he can’t even return the favor. And then:

_ I’m Armin. _

Eren feels the name like a punch to his chest, falling back against his bed dazedly. “Armin,” he breathes, out loud and with a smile in his voice. It is unexpected and nothing he could have thought of and it is  _ perfect _ . 

Eren licks his hand, scrubbing away his messages so that he has room for more words. ‘Your drawings are beautiful,’ he writes, because now that he has started Eren could not possibly stop. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while.’

There is a pause, as if his soulmate does not know what to say; and then Eren understands.

_ So why didn’t you? _

How can he tell Armin that he had been worried about not measuring up to him; that he had feared disappointing his soulmate and had left Armin so alone all these years in the process. That it had taken such a blatant cry of help--that he was fairly sure Armin hadn’t even  _ meant  _ for him to see--to finally speak up.

Eren was such a shitty soulmate.

‘You could say I’m an ass,’ he answered with an added drawing of an unhappy face. ‘I was nervous I guess. I’m sorry.’

_ It’s alright, _ comes the reply, far faster this time.  _ You’re talking now and that’s what counts. I’ve wanted to meet you for forever. _

Warmth blooms in Eren’s chest. Fuck, he doesn’t care if everyone feels like this, doesn’t care that this is so utterly cliche and normal his soulmate is  _ perfect _ .

At sixteen Eren begins to fall in love.

(It is not that easy of course. Speaking up for the first time does not take away the hurt inside Armin; does not cut away the times he paints red across his skin because he does not want to use blood; does not stop the bullies or the fact that Eren is only words on skin, but it helps. Slowly, but surely, it helps.)

* * *

 

They are eighteen and have just graduated high school when they first meet. Armin lives several cities away and they had agreed to wait until after school was over to take that final step, so to speak.

Eren goes to Armin because he wants to see everything there is to his soulmate and because he’s hoping Armin will show him the studio he’s set up in his grandfather’s attic. His soulmate has only grown more and more talented in the passing years.

On the back of his hand is an address and a description, one that Eren consults as he steps into a coffee shop. It is decently crowded but not overwhelmingly so, and Eren gets in line as he searches the faces around him for his soulmate. His breath catches when he sees Armin, checking and double checking his hand before simply settling on staring. The description did nothing to prepare him for this.

He’s sitting in the back as he said, what looks like a sketchbook opened up before him. Bent over the table as he draws Armin’s hair falls over his shoulder, bound back in a long ponytail that spills sunlight over his sweater. His eyes are down and he is too far away for Eren to tell, but the description says they are blue and Eren desperately wants to see just what shade of the color fills his soulmate’s eyes. 

The girl at the counter has to cough several times to catch his attention, and Eren startles as his eyes fly back to the drink in her hand. She hands it to him with some amusement, and he hurries away with cheeks flushed. 

With nothing left to do but go to Armin, Eren hesitates, staring at the blonde absorbed in his art. Eren has been waiting for this since he was six and now that the moment is finally here he is at a loss of what to do. But he is not a coward.

Taking a steadying breath Eren winds his way around tables and chairs alike, sliding into the seat opposite Armin before he can convince himself to walk past instead. His heart feels as if it is beating out of his chest, and Eren swallows as it climbs up his throat. Armin looks up in surprise, mouth opening to inform his new companion that that seat is taken before promptly freezing in place.

“Eren,” he says, and Eren’s chest aches so  _ sweetly _ . Armin’s voice is low and gentle and one of the warmest things Eren has ever heard. His eyes--which are no one shade, Eren thinks distantly, the blue far too complex and vibrant to name just one color--are wide and smiling, matching the slow curve of his mouth.

“Armin,” Eren echoes, setting his coffee down in front of him before his shaking hands can drop it all over himself. A slow grin tugs at his mouth despite his nerves, unable to help it. This is  _ Armin _ , this is his  _ soulmate _ ; and not for the first time Eren thinks: he’s perfect.

* * *

 

Eren regrets many things going into college. Deciding to stay together and get a joint apartment with Armin is not one of them. Becoming Jean’s friend, however, is. Thrown together in the engineering program they had had no choice but to get used to one another as semester after semester they were partnered up. They worked well enough when not at each other’s throats, but Jean was an asshole at worst, a dick at best and if Eren wasn’t careful he would very easily take advantage of that. 

The first time Eren had lost focus around Jean--which was, ironically, when he was busy texting Armin about how much of a pain his partner was--Jean had taken all of his sticky notes and written various expletives in regards to Eren. The second time he went into Eren’s notes and changed several of the most repeated words to ridiculous phrases. The third he sent Armin a bouquet of dicks, courtesy of Eren’s outstretched arm as he slept on his textbook.  

Poor Armin, who had been sleeveless and working in the art studio had nearly had a heartattack when in bold capital letters the message ‘bet you want this dick’ appeared on his forearm.  _ Of course _ , Jean had written it in permanent marker, and  _ of course _ Eren and Armin alike had the words and drawing plastered onto their skin for the next week and a half. 

Eren somehow had gotten the feeling that Armin held a bit of resentment towards him for that.

(A month or so later, when Jean made the mistake of falling asleep in their apartment with his shirt off, Armin took his own sharpies to his back and made an absolute  _ masterpiece  _ complete with a scene composed of entirely phallic shapes. 

Jean grew a bit terrified of Armin after that. Eren, however, couldn’t have loved him more.)

* * *

When they are not terrorizing Jean--it was getting even, Armin insists, as Jean writhes in the background, trying to see just what is on his back--they are doing what most soulmates do. Getting lost in one another.

Eren could spend days just curled against Armin’s side, braiding Armin’s long hair, sharing lazy kisses, laughing in bed over some stupid story they’d thought of… Anything to do with Armin is okay with him. He doesn’t even mind when Armin asks him to pose for his human study drawings, nor when he falls asleep on his stomach and wakes up to Armin straddling his hips and painting beauty across the skin of his back. He’d redrawn the dragon once, when Eren had brought it up, painting reds and yellows and vibrant orange in a spiral up his arm. If Armin would let him he would keep his soulmate’s art on his body forever. Unfortunately that would mean leaving no more room for future works of art, and so Eren does not mind being Armin’s canvas so long as he continues to paint more. 

Eren cannot return the favor, something of which he mourns. He cannot turn Armin’s body into living art, cannot add to his beauty. But then again, Armin is already a masterpiece to him. 

While Armin has cups and drawers full of tools to make art, Eren’s only paintbrushes are his mouth and hands. The marks he bites into Armin’s shoulder and neck are not the worlds Armin creates on his own, and the bruises he squeezes into the curve of Armin’s hips and the softness of his thighs are not the vibrant colors that Armin mixes into shades of affection, but they are all Eren has to offer. Even still, Armin seems to savor this.

When they are twisted together, hot and panting and desperate he calls for Eren to bite harder, to grip tighter. He shudders when Eren makes shapes of his own out of the marks his mouth leaves, and Eren has found him more than once admiring the marks with a small smile on his reflection. Eren wishes he could erase the marks on Armin’s thighs with his hands, the way that Armin wipes his pallets clean with a single swipe. But they are a part of Armin as much as the freckles making constellations on his skin and to take them away would be to change the person that Armin was and had become. His soulmate is so  _ strong  _ and though Eren sometimes wishes he could change the past he knows Armin has no regrets.

Their paths lead them to one another, didn’t they?

**Author's Note:**

> (if anyone wants to give me eremin prompts I am in desperate need)


End file.
